Collegium Musicum N J

Phyllis Alpert Lehrer

Teacher, Pianist, Clinician, Author

Phyllis Alpert Lehrer is known internationally as a teacher, performer, clinician, author and adjudicator. She has given master classes, workshops and enjoyed an active concert career as a soloist and collaborative artist in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, Asia and Europe.

Ms. Lehrer is professor emerita of piano at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, N.J. She now serves on the artist faculty of the Westminster Conservatory, the community music school associated with Westminster. A founding member of Young Audiences of New Jersey and the International Society for the Study of Tension in Performance, she has presented regularly at conferences of the Music Teachers National Association, National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, the European Piano Teachers Association and New Jersey Music Teachers Association. Recent lectures, master classes and performances have taken place at the Music-Quest Festival in Pune, India, the International Society for Music Education in Glasgow, Scotland, Performing Arts and Medicine Conference in Colorado and New York City, Nebraska Music Teachers Association, Portland District Music Teachers Association, Delaware Music Teachers Association, Third Street Settlement in New York City, Brooklyn College Conservatory, the Steinway Society, New York Piano Teachers’ Congress, Greenwich Music House, Westminster Choir College, the Westminster Conservatory Beethoven Festival and the New School for Music Study Faculty Alumni Recital.

Articles, interviews and reviews on piano pedagogy, music and health by Ms. Lehrer have
been published in Clavier Companion, The American Music Teacher, and The European Piano Teachers Journal. Recent publications include five volumes of the great piano repertoire, Classics for the Developing Pianist, co-edited with Ingrid Clarfield, along with the Study Guides that accompany books 1, 2, 3, 4 published by Alfred, Inc. A fifth book, Study Guide 5 is available at Sheet Music Press. Personal Trainer, five volumes devoted to keyboard theory, sight playing, technique and repertoire with midi accompaniments, co-authored with Paul Sheftel, are published by YBK publications in New York City. Mr. Sheftel and Ms. Lehrer also co-edited 10 books of intermediate to early advanced piano literature with accompanying CD’s for Carl Fischer: Mastering Classic Favorites and More Mastering Classic Favorites as well as Debussy: An Album. Ms. Lehrer was author and editor of Chopin: An Album, also published by Carl Fischer. She wrote the practice suggestions for the four books of Piano Etudes for the Development of Musical Fingers selected and edited by Frances Clark, Louise Goss and Sam Holland. Among her other edited works are Fantasie-Variations and Sonata, No. 2, Op. 31 by Dianne Goolkasian- Rahbee, Outside the Box by Kevin Olson and Wynn-Anne Rossi, and Dance Preludes for Piano Duet by Timothy Brown, published by FJH.

Phyllis Lehrer has contributed several chapters to A Symposium for Pianists and Teachers: Strategies to Develop the Mind and Body for Optimal Performance and co-authored The Inner Game of Music Keyboard Workbook with Barry Green. Her collaboration of over 35 years with piano partner, Ena Bronstein Barton, includes two CDs, featuring duets and duo piano works.</p.Ms. Lehrer received a B.A. with music concentration from the University of Rochester and Eastman School of Music and an M.S. in piano from the Juilliard School of Music. Honored as a Music Teachers National Association Foundation Fellow in 2007, Ms. Lehrer was voted New Jersey Music Teachers Association Teacher of the Year for 2012-2013. In 2019 she received the Westminster Merit Award from the Westminster Alumni Association. In July 2021, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy, of the Frances Clark Center.